Mental Case
by XenoSangui
Summary: Sequel to Metempsychosis. When Dean comes back from Hell, everyone has a hard time believing it. Harry's no different from any other hunter. Slamming the door is only logical, right?


**Title**: Mental Case

**Characters: **Harry, Dean

**Rating: **T

**Warnings:** Language (no worse than the show)

**Spoilers: **Up to (but not including) Season 4. Obviously, the deal should be common knowledge.

**Word Count: **1,655 Words

**Summary_: _**_Sequel to Metempsychosis._ When Dean comes back from Hell, everyone has a hard time believing it. Harry's no different from any other hunter. The responding, _"Sonuvabitch, my face!" _actually makes Harry feel just a little bit better.

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><p><em>They say misery loves company<em>

_Cause after all that you put me through _

_I never want to see you again_

_Cause I have come to terms_

_This ain't no life or death situation_

_~After All...**Saving Abel**~_

It's easy to trick himself into thinking he's over Dean.

He's had a few relationships—if they can even be called that—with some girls and guys since the Winchester offed himself for his brother. Sold his soul, blemished his entire being to bring back his dead brother.

Despite everything, Harry can't bring himself to hate Dean for that.

Yes, he knows the whole story now. He knows why Dean came back from saving his brother all pissy and upset—with that darkness that shook him to his core. He knows Dean fought off all the feelings he had for him and left to save Harry from the pain of seeing him crumble. He knows it all, courtesy of Sam.

He's seen the younger Winchester only once since Dean passed. _Merlin, _passed. Dead. Out of all the people Harry knew he would have to use the euphemism for, Dean isn't in the top half. Even with the constant danger he put himself in, Dean is..._was..._one of the best. He can..._could..._get out of some of the most deadly positions without more than some broken ribs and a bruised pride.

"...arry! Harry!" Harry blinks a few times, his surrounding coming into focus. Right, he's at work...acting normal. Or, at least, trying to act like he's fine, _normal_, and not like he's depressed out of his mind. Because he's not, not really. Sure, Dean's gone—a pain flares through him at the thought—but he won't back down from his life because of it. He won't.

Instead, he focuses in on his boss, Layna, a woman so small even _he_ towards over her when she wears heels. He attempts a smile. Harry's pretty sure its a failed attempt when she frowns in worry. "Hey, Harry, you look beat. One of the bad days?"

"Yeah." She's one of the few people nowadays he bothers to talk to. She has the ability to get him to feel like he isn't alone...like he has someone who gives a damn. "I guess." Layna's one of the few people who know about Dean. Not his name per se, but the fact that he existed and is now..._gone_.

"Take a day off, then. We have extra hands today. Scheduling errors." She leaves before he has a chance to protest. He doesn't want to be alone. Being alone means facing the storm and trying to get through it.

He doesn't want to remember.

Layne is gone and refuses his pleas to stay, so he takes his light jacket from the employee coat rack, throws it carelessly over his back, and walks quietly out the door. It's lunch hour, so the place is full of families on road trips and children running everywhere. He doesn't mind this time of year, unlike most of the other people he's worked with. Happiness is abound and there's a nice feeling that always seems to linger in the air.

He can't feel it now, though, but that's not surprising to him. Harry isn't as susceptible to human emotions anymore.

A small part of him nags at the back of his head, whispering that this fixation over Dean's death can't be healthy and that, maybe, he's a little more attached to Dean than he ever wanted to believe.

He doesn't have a car and apparated in his current state of mind will only result in some serious splinching, so he pulls the hood of his jacket up to cover his face, burying his hands in the deep pockets. It isn't cold—not really—but people always seem to stare at him no matter where he goes. The scars were noticeable and a lot of people don't understand the meaning of being subtle.

He hates the stares, but the scars are a part of him that he's already accepted.

Harry's apartment is a tiny little two-room cubbyhole surrounded by identical little dwellings. It isn't a nice place to live by a long shot—the wallpaper is peeling, half the flooring is coming up, and when it rains, little puddles form on his bedroom floor—but it's all he can afford with his minimum wage salary at the diner.

It's funny to think he used to be rich before his vaults were blocked.

No one would ever guess that little detail about him; that's how he likes it anyway. Rich people are treated differently, like they're so much more important. For once in his life, Harry doesn't want to feel important. He doesn't want to stand above the crowd. He just wants to be Harry, a poor adult who never started high school(let alone finished it) with his life a constant downward spiral In other words, exactly the same as everyone else in the apartment building.

His apartment is on the third floor; the elevators(as always) are broken down. Harry's pretty sure the 'out of service' sign has been hanging on the door since he arrived here a few months ago.

He closes the door behind him, blocking out the loud noises in the hall. Harry leans against the door, slowly sliding down until he's sitting on the floor, his head in his hands as he stares directly in front of him. The wall is blank, but he doesn't really appear to see it at all.

_Because who's he kidding?_

For all this time—these _long_ four months—he's been telling himself this is normal. This...irrevocable sadness is merely because he and Dean...they were friends. Dean's death was nothing more than a good friend's dead.

_In the end, Dean wasn't anything more than that._

Harry knows he's in love with Dean. He's always been in love with him—always will be. Death isn't going to stop those feelings...ever. Maybe...maybe it hurts so much because Dean never told him the reasons why they wouldn't work out—that Dean made a deal with a demon to get Sam back from the clutches of death.

It hurts knowing Dean never gave him that information himself. They wasted so much time on fights and pushing each other away when they should have made the best of the time they had. Harry knows this now, but then..._then_ there was no logic behind Dean's behavior.

It makes sense _now_, but it's four months too late. _He's_ four months too late.

Harry isn't deluded or stupid—this whole occurrence wasn't his fault at all. It's all Dean and the incredible loyalty his has to his remaining family—Sam._ It's all the dumb, hypocritical—_But he stops those thoughts, because, _really_, what's the point?

He shuts down, staring at the blank, peeling wall for the res of the night. Nevermind not breaking down –he has the right. Harry sighs, letting his head fall back against the door. _Great._

_Dean, Dean, Dean._

The guy's dead and he still seems to have a presence in Harry's head.

There's a knock at the door sometime during the day, insistent pounding. It's probably the owner, asking for this month's money. Harry doesn't have it—or last month's.

He doesn't open the door.

(~) (~) (~) (~) (~)

At midnight, Harry's stands up and stretches his aching limbs. _Perhaps_, he thinks wryly as he stands on his toes and cracks his back, _sitting on the floor for five hours wasn't my greatest plan. _

There is this absolute feeling within him, though, this sudden lack of care. He feels lighter than he has in weeks—he doesn't feel so tired or constantly hopeless. He can't feel anything for the first time and it feels nice. Refreshing.

Tomorrow is going to _suck_, because he knows those feelings will return fully force in the morning when he has to face the day(_and Layna_). Merlin, she's going to be a pain in his arse. He's halfway across the room when there's another knock—this one quieter, as if someone's being considerate enough not to wake the entire hall.

Harry's eyebrows furrow slightly and he does a double take at his clock—it can't be the guy asking for a rent payment. By this time, he's half drunk, passed out on his couch. Harry doesn't have anyone else who would come to his apartment at this hour—it's not like he's ever had many friends.

He wipes the sleep from his eyes and opens the door halfheartedly, putting some of his weight against the doorframe. "What—?"

Dean's face—unbloodied and non-mutilated—stares back at him. Dean—no, some_thing_ else—gives him that cocky smile he used to love so much, "Hey, Harry, think I can come in?"

Harry slams the door in the _thing_'s face.

The responding, _"Sonuvabitch, my face!" _actually makes Harry feel just a little bit better.

(~) (~) (~) (~) (~)

He rests his forehead against the cool wood of the door, taking a few deeps breaths. Whatever creature out there impersonating Dean is_ going to die. _Harry's not a complete idiot and he knows for a fact that nothing short of a miracle can bring someone back when they're that far gone.

Harry doesn't believe in miracles anymore.

He knows Fate's a bitch and Death is a cruel bastard.

After a few moments, there's another knock—insistent and loud. It gnaws on his nerves and Harry groans, hitting his head a few times on the cheap wood. Whatever that thing is already knows he's here, so who cares if it heard his emotional crisis?

"Go away," he yells, just loud enough to be heard through the crappy door by the...thing. "Or I'm going to kill whatever the hell you are."

"Harry..."

The wizard grits his teeth again when the familiar voice sends shivers down his spine; this creature—shapeshifter maybe?—is so very, _very_ dead.

Once he gets up the courage to kill something with Dean's face.

Harry really doesn't like to hunt like Dean used to—a lot of the time he would volunteer to be the researcher while Dean and Sam killed whatever was in the vicinity, but when something becomes personal, Harry has no qualms about kicking some demon-arse. Shapeshifter-arse. _Whatever. _

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><p><em>I'm evil, I know. This was supposed to be longer, but I wanted to stop here. Why? No idea. Might write <em>_(yet another) sequel, but I'm not sure what would happen. Eh, it's all up in the air. _

_Review...Especially if you want another installation._


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